VoodooPokey

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I find it interesting that the "Risk vs Reward" has been forwarded as a reason when the Devs abandoned that smoke screen with the introduction of Merits. The game is about TIME vs Rewards, Risk has little to do with anything.

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This is absolutely true - it is about reward-time ratios. Risk is a totally subjective concept that you can pretty much guarantee devs are not trying to codify - it is a red herring in all of these discussions, as well.

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Activity which breaks their accepted time-frame will be acted upon IF it becomes a statistically relevant. For example, if I was the only player capable of running 10 min ITFs, it would not be statistically relevant to the game as a whole. IF I teach 10,000 other players how to do it, it then becomes relevant and the Devs will move to make changes to the game.

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That is very likely what they do, assuming they have at least 80 IQ points between them (we're arguing this in another thread). It's also not a bad way to do it given their goals, which are probably not far off from what you later suggested.

A good deal of it has to do with how much griping is happning from players, too. If you had 200 people doing heavy and "abusive" farming, they still wouldn't care if nobody was raising hell over the topic... but few things remain a secret for long, espcially if any of those 200 people see potential personal benefits by trading what they have or can do, with someone outside the 200 for some form of gain, etc etc..

I understand the concept just fine, but from testing we've seen that the % on the bar inside the in-game editor is not directly related to the filesize in any way. Since it was stated that the maximum size of arcs was 100k, it was a pretty natural assumption that it would be 100k in some form WE could measure it. I still suspect they were using it as an arbitrary measurement since... telling us the maximum size in a format we can't ever measure is pointless. Arcanaveal, in typical "useful" fashion says it was foolish to assume it would be in some way we could measure, that she knows how its done, but that she won't say. Useful as always, that one.

Given that file size is not what determines the % size in-editor, from testing, and that the file itself has not changed at all during its move between computers, the reason that it reads as two different in-editor %s is a bit of a mystery. Thats why I said he was welcome to try using IGOR to shrink down the filesize (it does remove some things that affect % as well, but its effect on % is nowhere near as profound as its effect on filesize) but that I'd love to know what is causing the discrepancies.

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Changing the file size locally won't fix anything. What matters is it's size server-side

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Feel free to read the rest of the thread too, to understand why we're disucssing this, Smurch.

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Time Control.

I've been trying to push a Time Control powerset for a long time. It has a lot of potential to include interesting effects, and a particularly unique one would be the ability to shorten animation cycle times (if that's possible). Anyway, we need more powersets with unusual abilities, not just another new weapon set; we have plenty of those.

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"You know, my son, I wouldn't be Emperor of the Galaxy if I didn't have a few powers at my disposal. Imperial Battleship, halt the flow of time!" (Star Crash)

There's no way they'd have the courage to put something like that in, because it means that not only do they have to balance the powerset against its "peers", but also go through all other powersets to make sure the effects don't cause major balancing issues.

That, or it'd just be a bit of a cross between Gravity Control and Kinetics. Speed up, slow down, out of phase...

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Marvel doesn't own the language, but the way our wonky US tax laws are written, they HAVE to pursue (read: sue over) any possible copyright theft to retain their copyright.

Have.
To.

Or else they risk losing it in a court case later when they really do have grounds to sue.

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This isn't true in the sense you're saying it is. DMCA law will require they remove any content that they receive a DMCA notice regarding, and that they put it back up if a subsequent challenge notice is sent by the person accused of placing the copyrighted materials on their system. The DMCA indemnifies service providers from responsibility for material that is placed on the system by their customers except in the cases mentioned above.

Thus, NCSoft does NOT have to proactively hunt for violations of Marvel's copyrights, but does have to take down arcs that Marvel swears (under what is considered a legally binding oath) is a violation of their copyrights. Its only if they fail to act once they get the notice that they forfeit their indeminification.

As for having to sue to retain copyright - this is simply false. You may be thinking of trademarks, and even then they're not required to hunt down all possible violations in order to retain it. It just gives them the right to prevent you from using things that might violate that trademark - not the obligation to do so.

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US copyright laws need some serious going over, but there's not much hope of that anytime soon on the horizon. In the meantime, the devs do what they gotta do and we have to go along with them because there's no other way to fight city hall on it right now.

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The laws aren't actually that bad - the only real issue is that they can be abused by dishonest people, especially if the victims don't know how to respond to fraudulent copyright claims. If you make a fraudulent DMCA notice, you can, technically, be charged with perjury.. but realistically, that isn't likely to happen. If you give your DMCA notice and I responsd with a challenge to it, then your only recourse is to sue ME - you can't sue the middle man, since they did exactly what is required by law.

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Software maintenance is a fact of life. Every time software is changed, someone should run a regression test to make sure that things are still working the way they should be. NCSoft isn't going to run regression tests on our missions, so we're going to have to do that ourselves. Yeah, it sucks. Welcome to software development!

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Uhm... what numbers are you running the regression on, exactly? I don't follow the logic on this one.

I do think you need to RUN (as in, play) your missions after changes to make sure they still work, but that's not really a statistical analysis.

Well, I need to wait on one user's storyarc file - he says IGOR made an arc that could public before IGOR, into an arc that could not publish! That baffles me, so I need to do some testing when I get that file.

IGOR makes the arc uneditable (it doesn't alter the original, it makes a copy) because it removes things that aren't necessary to get it published properly, but which the in-game editor cries over. If that's a problem I can just tell you which lines in your storyarc to remove without triggering any of those "errors", but the size starts inching up. Either way you should get the extra 2% needed.

You've got me stumped on that one, turg, if the filesize reported by the OS on both computers reads the exact same number (thats what I was saying to check to be CERTAIN of) then I agree, the actual disk usage would be my first guess... but we determined in the IGOR thread that filesize of any sort doesn't seem to directly correlate to the mission % used.

You're welcome to run it through IGOR, or I can tell you what stuff you can easily edit out of the file without causing editing difficulties if you want to see if reducing the filesize will help. Given the small % you're over, it should do the trick, but I'll admit I'd like to know the ultimate reason, not just throw a scuccessful solution at it without ever finding out.

General disinterest, really. It seemed to me that things were back to the way they were on day one of MA, where people put together teams to subject them to their personal arcs, which tend to be miserably bad (subjective opinion, of course) so the team breaks up before the first mission is complete, or shortly after it is.

I'm sure it depends on the server - I play on Liberty and Infinity and it has seemed pretty sparse. Maybe I just got used to the activity that was happening before the nerf, and its back to normal?

Filesize turns out to be irrelevant, more or less. You can easily get the filesize down to a third its normal size, and it won't reduce the in-editor % by 2/3rds.

You should check the reported filesizes of the various files on both computers to see where the extra is - it seems highly unlikely that the difference is actual disk usage.

Lets try to keep our eye on the ball, here, folks. The point was not that there should be an AE terminal in Pocket-D because it is thematically appropriate - the point is that since they've already demonstrated that heroes and villains teaming to do AE missions is something they like, why not allow it to happen pre-35?

Seriously, think outside the box that is Pocket-D's current state for a moment. It requires nothing more than putting something like an "architect lounge" room that takes people looking to be on collaborative teams to a second area where they set that up. Its not like its a novel concept... the tiki lounge for VIPs is done that way.

So, given that heroes and villains CAN run AE arcs together already, just not before level 35 (unless they happen to use the mission transporter power) do you have any conceptual issues with them making it easier for them to do so, and if so, please specify them.

I, for one, think it'd be a nice and simple addition - though it might cut into the point of their next expansion somewhat (BFD).

Custom groups with selected stock critters in them are the major issue with AE, assuming you feel there is an issue... its what lets you single out a mob like the Rikti Comm Officer and have nothing BUT that mob in large groups.

If it were just freakshow rather than a custom group that included specific freakshow, then it wouldn't be a farm at all, because it would be no different than any dev-created or randomly created mission that used freaks.

Obviously you had to do that mission as part of your Day Job, and just logged in before your character could complete it on their own.

You don't think you earn those Day Job badges for nothing, do you? There's hard work behind them!

Ok, then I'd have to take a look at the storyarc file to see what is happening to it. I can understand the possibility that an arc that could NOT publish prior to IGOR still not being able to publish, but not the idea of an arc that COULD publish prior to IGOR not being able to afterward.

If I SWEAR TO GOD I'm not trying to steal your brilliant MA ideas, will you send me a copy (or post it) in PM? If any part of IGOR can possibly ruin a storyarc file then it needs to be modified (igor, not the storyarc).

Newspaper & Radio missions are random single missions - they're still level restrictive, and they are not tailored to your individual strengths and preferences. That said, they are still the mainstay of certain level range's playing time.

That, however, doesn't have to be the end of it. Content that is tailor-made for a certain toon, or set of toons, is quite possible. The normal way to do things is to form a group and then select content that is appropriate for what you have - if you have two tanks and a controller, you probably don't want to be stuck in a "defeat all" mission with high-HP mobs, for example. If you've got 3 blasters, you'll probably have a rough time against heavy-hitting enemies.

Now, if the program generating the content knows what strengths and weaknesses a given party has, it can create enemies and goals that play specifically to those strengths. If it knows that three of the eight people hate timed missions, it can avoid giving any. You can have novel new enemies in each arc, without being subjected to things your party cannot readily deal with.

Sorting through player-made arcs is... tedious for most people. There are a lot of BADLY MADE arcs in the MA database, and they are similarly not keyed to your particular play style. You could certainly play hundreds and hundreds of arcs and then try to come up with a list of level appropriate stuff for different ATs, or you could just have it create the arcs for you on the spot.

I'm planning to do the latter. While the arcs will not have deep and satisfying storylines, they also won't require any work on the part of the player, and they'll be ready to go whenever there is a player or party wanting some content they're capable of successfully navigating.

dug - you don't need a stub... the file is simple enough. The only things that need pre-making are decisions on which costume pieces go together and under which theme, which maps suit which themes, and various text aspects that can be strung together for flavour. Then the program can pick a theme (like... high tech, or magic, or undead, or whatever) and then build appropriate costumes for the custom mobs, give them appropriate abilities, and whip together 5 missions with varying goals that are acceptable to the players, and voila... there's a storyarc file one of the players publishes and the party plays. It can be unpublished once they're done.

My wife and I have been playing COx for quite some time, and have characters we enjoy playing of various levels. Like many we're not particularly fond of repeating the same things (like the early levels) over and over. Recently some friends of ours have taken to playing, but different people play at different rates, and the various characters we all want to play end up at different levels.

This is where the MA is particularly good - the auto SKing system lets people of many levels play together without havign to find people of the same level to do the SKing. Likewise, it lets you play through a certain level range without having to repeat the same content.

So the idea is this - a program that automatically generates story arcs based on a set of criteria (player AT/powersets/preferences) for a group of players to play through. It would allow groups comprised of characters of various different levels to play together, and would cater to their strengths and to what they enjoy.

Additionally, this would let people who don't want to suffer through the same content again instead level through new and customized content. Granted, the lack of drops might be a downer, but likewise anyone who is sick of standard content is probably not depending on those drops for much.

While generating random storyarc files is easy, making it a worthwhile thing would depend on quite a bit of user-made data - specifically, figuring out which enemy powersets are best and worst for which ATs or which player powersets, as well as levels, and associating them with preferences. Some people hate being knocked back, some people hate END drain, some people hate enemy holds. Likewise, some ATs don't care too much (a tanker isn't worried about being held except in the early levels). Also, some maps and some mission objectives are more annoying or more fun than others.

So, I figured I'd see if there was anyone out there that was interested in helping to hammer out that sort of details with me while I work on the arc generator. Certainly the use of standard enemies is an option too, but there are some sets of standard enemies that are better or worse for some ATs and powersets as well.

A combination of pride and cowardice are going to prevent any appropriate follow-up to positron's posting. The best solution would be a posting by positron apologizing for making such a heavy-handed posting, and saying that no accounts are at risk, but that they will continue to refine the MA to return it to the vision they had. A brief bit about how MA was something he was very excited about and that seeing it being used for such base actions got him a little upset and that he posted in haste, would pretty much satisfy every single angry patron instantly.

The vast majority of players are fine with refinements to the MA system. The people who don't farm are happy to see fixes in place... the people who do farm are willing to accept them. What nobody is ok with is being threatened or treated like children, regardless of how much someone might think they have been acting as such.

But, like I said, an apology is highly unlikely. Instead it'll be played off as "well, we'll let you lawbreakers slide this time, but only because we're nice". Saving face is always worth losing customers to that type of person.

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Which would imply that it's a last step action, and only a 'perhaps'?

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If I say I might kill your family, then I'm sure you won't sweat it at all, given that there's a "might" in the sentence. Threats are threats, and regardless of whether someone goes through with them, they're an attack on that person. Don't believe me? Check out the laws in your country to see how legal making a credible threat to someone is.

People have every right to be worked up about Positron making threats, even if he doesnt' carry through with them. The number of candy-[censored] dev otakus out there is not sufficiently high to keep the game afloat if they run off all the people who don't support everything the authorities do on merit of them being the authorities...

That's pretty bizarre, I'll admit. I can't see how a single custom critter whose inclusion or exclusion will change the mission being able to publish normally, would make the arc too big even after IGORing it. How complex are the costumes of these custom critters? One of the things that has been reported is that critters with all parts used (wings, auras, glasses, beard, etc etc..) tend to reduce badly since IGOR has to leave most of their costumepart entries alone.

KeepDistance - I'll admit that the critter thing I'm basing primarily on hearsay from other MA threads. I've only encountered the problem once, but it was the only one time I changed a critter after I'd made an arc. It did not update the arc's version for me.

As for the defaults - we're talking about inside the file versus inside the editor. If you remove a text's entry inside the file THAT is when you see what the default is - its what the system defaults to when you don't specify a value. When you use the editor it does specify a value for each entry, and that value is "" (quoted blank). IF you want to see the internal default for something, go into your .storyarc file and delete the line for it. Try it for the mission timer, or the enter mission text sometime, then test your arc. You might want to back the storyarc file beforehand if you don't want to remember what the parameter name was.

Since I'm not in a COx dev-friendly mood today owing to Positron's recent threats, I'll say this...

The MA system is sloppy as hell from a programming standpoint. There are plenty of aspects that were obviously half-done or briefly implemented then never removed when the method was abandoned.

Example - each critter outside of its own .critter file has a reference to the original critter file in SPITE of the fact that the entirety of that critter file is included in any such file. The custom villain group files have this, as to the storyarc files. This would make sense (barely) if the arc editor planned to update the information it has using the content of the .critter file later (which would, of course, beg the question as to why it includes the entire file within itself, but nevermind that) but it DOES NOT. If you edit a storyarc file, and have updated the critters used in it since the last time you saved the storyarc... it DOES NOT UPDATE THE STORYARC with the new information.

The files themselves have a format developed by someone's dog or cat. Some sections begin and end with a word, some are enclosed in braces { }... strings are unquoted unless they have a space, quoted if they have a space, and then surrounded by a totally different quoting system if they contain quotes.

Even the defaults for various fields are nonsensical. The default for time limit on a mission is not "none", the default is "30 minutes". The default for many of the text fields is not blank, its artifact text strings left by the programmers such as "This is the text the PC will see when they enter a mission".

All in all the MA system looks thrown together by a 15 year old. Its unsurprising people run into stupid problems like this.

I think a much bigger issue is people thinking their creative works are so profoundly desirable that other people would want to steal them. There's a lot of that type of thinking going around the MA world - people carefully guarding the secrets of their story arcs.

Newsflash - nobody cares! Nobody sits up at night and wishes with all their might that they're the ones who had thought up the Rikti War story. There are no MA arcs out there that every player has rushed out to play, other than possibly farm arcs, and 95% of the players don't bother to read the flavour text associated with the mission arcs in the game.

So chill out and just enjoy yourself. Nobody is trying to steal your magic bag.

Oi vey, let me try this again.

Was the arc, prior to applying IGOR, able to publish? If not, it is possible that even with IGOR's reductions, the data is too large to publish. As we found early on in this thread, the whole 100k statement was an arbitrary estimate, so reducing the filesize below 100k doesn't guarantee it will publish. IGOR does reduce the functional size, but even with the reduction some arcs are still too big.

If the arc could publish prior to using IGOR, but will not publish after using it, then we want to take a look at the original arcfile (well, I do) so I can figure out what is going on there.

When a file is run through IGOR it will remove certain fields used by the EDITOR that are not used by the MA system for any other purpose. This is why the editor will give you errors when you open an IGOR file with it. These errors DO NOT INTERFERE WITH PUBLISHING. They are not actual errors to anything except the in-game edit system, and even the in-game edit system doesn't actually use those fields for anything but giving silly errors.

So what it probably comes down to is: your arc is still too big even with IGOR's reductions.

Farming is, in concept, very tedious - but I've found that its not half bad as far as PUGs go. Everybody is out to do the same thing, and almost every farming PUG is very laid back. Since you know what to expect, there's often lively discourse between team members, and rarely are there any hard feelings over someone messing up and getting someone else killed.

Conceptually the whole thing is dumb, but from a playing standpoint... its been kind'v enjoyable. My wife, my friends and I still run normal content together on certain toons, but the farming has given some of us a chance to try out characters we wouldn't have otherwise been able to tolerate the early levels of (stone tanker... gah!).

The only thing I'd suggest is that the AE buildings be moved out of Atlas and Galaxy. I do think all the farming broadcasts make the game look trashy to new players.

Well, the only thing that is causing the editor to claim the custom boss info is missing, is removing the ReferenceFile field from each critter. The only thing that field does is tell the editor which of your .critter files the critter comes from which, in turn, the editor DOES NOT USE once you've imported them the once. If you alter the .critter file, your .storyarc file won't update its internals to match it automatically. This is especially true if you're going back and editing an already-published arc.

Ultimately, it comes down to being a quirk of the editor. The field is not used for anything, but the editor complains if its not there - BUT it will not affect the publish button unless you go into the in-game editor and then save the file from inside that.

As for it being greyed out - was it greyed out before you IGOR'd the file, BrandFrontier? If so, its possible the data is still too large, even with the garbage stripped out. If the file is genuinely invalid, the entire box that displays that custom story arc turns vivid red, the buttons aren't just greyed out.

As for Skarmony's statement... well it comes down to this. If the arc would NOT publish without the use of IGOR, then you're pretty much out of luck on post-publishing edits without unpublishing the arc anyway. Why? Because unless I'm mistaken (and I might be - I'll admit that I have not tried this) when you do your local edit of the data, it will reinflate the entire thing and make it too large for the system to accept once again. This would be true even if the editor did not tell you that the custom boss data was missing (which, again, it is not - the only thing missing that causes that "error" is the ReferenceFile field in the cutom critters, which is nothing but a pointer to the .critter file that all the internal critter data originally came from). The referencefile field is totally useless since the storyarc file holds a complete copy of that file inside itself.